


Patchwork

by Ragdoll_Ren (NellieSly)



Series: Patchwork-verse [2]
Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn, Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Era, Coming of Age, Dungeons & Dragons as plot device, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Ghosts, Jewish Characters, LGBTQ Themes, Mentions of Major Character Death, Multi, POV Multiple, Reunions, mentions of period-typical homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-02-19 12:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NellieSly/pseuds/Ragdoll_Ren
Summary: January-March, 1985. Everyone gets what they didn't know they needed when the Jewish population of Hawkins (more than) doubles.Or: Will Byers is gay and half Jewish. Sound familiar?[Updates infrequently, but not abandoned yet!]





	1. Pianissimo

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much the entire idea for this fic comes from [this photo](http://bisexualelioperlman.tumblr.com/post/167422802355/joyces-maiden-name-is-horowitz-shes-jewish-lads)

He was in a hospital bed, and then he was in a forest.

What the fuck?

Whizzer had been dying, and now he was. . . fine? Except his arm was halfway through a tree.

Oh.

So was this hell? He had expected hell to involve a lot more burning. The place had a scorched look to it, like a chemical fire had spread and been hastily put out, but other than that there was nothing particularly ominous about it. There were squirrels and things, and a few well-trodden paths in the forest floor. People – people who could leave footprints, he noticed as he moved across the wet, leafy muck rather than through it – had been here.

Following one of the paths, he came to a residential street, lined with cookie-cutter suburban houses with bikes and basketball hoops in front. This was obviously nowhere near the hospital. It was early but the sky was light, and there were newspapers laying in the driveways. Whizzer bent to pick one up, only to be surprised when he couldn’t grasp it. This was going to take getting used to. It’s not like he _felt_ like a ghost, or looked like one, either; there wasn’t a vapory tail where his legs were supposed to be or anything. Crouching down to read it with a huff, he saw:

_THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR  
_

SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1985

He’d apparently taken a dirt nap for more than three years and woken up just in time to. . . what? Haunt Ronnie’s second inauguration? Maybe this really was hell. No, there’d been an election, he could’ve lost. Whizzer was suddenly even more frustrated that he couldn’t unfurl the newspaper to read the rest of it. So much could have happened in three y –  _oh, shit._

_Marvin._

Charlotte had warned him, Whizzer knew. He could see it playing on his mind, at times, in those quiet moments when they were curled next to each other. But Marvin had been so brave, and so unselfish. . .

_(“What good is a lover who’s scared?”)_

He had to go to him.

Even if Whizzer couldn’t hold him, even if Marvin wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t know – he would be there, at least. In their apartment or at his bedside, until the end, just like Marvin had done for him. Unless. . .

No.

Well, there was only one way to find out.

He could picture their bedroom perfectly: the bed under the window, probably unmade; Marvin’s clothes spilling out of the closet and onto the floor; the precarious tower of books that was always on his nightstand – and willed himself to be transported to the middle of it.

Nothing changed.

After a moment, Whizzer tried again, clicking his heels together, sarcastic and sincere all at once:

_There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. . ._

It was worth a shot. What else was a dead queen to do, anyway?

So he was going to have to walk (float?) to Manhattan. The sun was rising, faintly visible behind a white sheet of clouds, and he headed east towards it, back through the patch of woods he had come from.

Past the weird burnt place and down a different path, a fort stood in a clearing. Whizzer circled it curiously, stopping to read the hand-painted signs at the entrance:

 

**CASTLE BYERS**

**HOME OF WILL THE WISE**

**ALL FRIENDS WELCOME**

 

Jason used to do the same sort of thing, he remembered with a pang, rearranging the furniture whenever the adults fought – ducking under a mess of tables and chairs and couch cushions with his cassette player and turning the volume all the way up. It felt a little intrusive to poke around some kid’s private space, but it was a Saturday morning. “Will the Wise” would probably be sleeping in. And besides, what the hell, it’s not like anyone would be able to see him, he reasoned as he moved through the curtains without disturbing them.

The inside was cozy, with colored pencils and comic books scattered over a nest of blankets and stuffed toys. To the side there was an old wooden crate lined with newspaper and straw, with wilted lettuce in it. Whizzer felt an almost immediate tenderness toward this kid, who fed wild animals and liked art and had made sure to point out that all friends were welcome here.

The curtains parted.

They stood in silence for a moment, blinking at each other.

“Hey, kid,” Whizzer said softly, holding up a hand, “you can see me?”


	2. Charisma

Will knew the Gate had been closed, but it was still hard to sleep. Most nights he was completely convinced it was still open, until he woke up drenched in sweat and already hoarse from screaming. That hadn’t happened last night, though, and he wasn’t going to risk ruining it by going back to bed. Even though it was only – he glanced at the clock – 6:24 a.m. Cartoons wouldn’t be on for another hour and a half.

The best way to avoid the restless, surreal state that was his brain’s new default was to always be doing something active. He had to go somewhere, but sneaking out of the house would freak everyone out for sure. On a piece of notebook paper, he wrote: _Going to check on Castle Byers, back in time for breakfast_ ** _DON’T PANIC_** _(please) xo--Will._ It wasn’t even a lie; sometimes animals took shelter there, especially in winter, and he felt a kind of responsibility toward them. Mostly it was stray cats, but a rabbit had found it once or twice. As an afterthought, he added small sketches of a kitten, a snowflake, and a smiley face.

Okay, so maybe that was laying it on a bit thick. But he knew his mom wouldn’t be mad as long as she thought he was happy.

And he was, more or less. Will considered it as he tugged on a sweater and boots over his pajamas. Safe was like happy. Distracted was like happy. He shoved a flashlight and a spare key into the pockets of a coat that had been Jonathan’s first and headed into the woods.

The air was crisp and still. Castle Byers was a good place to go at times like this because it was so obviously not how it was in the Upside Down. Everything felt more real there, more concrete.

There was a man inside, looking around. Or a patch of light shaped like a man. Or something.

“Hey, kid,” it raised its hand, “you can see me?”

He pointed the flashlight at its torso, and the beam shone on the opposite wall.

“This is all too weird,” it said as it sighed and ran a hand through its hair, “look, I’m sorry, I was just leavi –”

“There’s a password.” It was the only thing he could think of to say. It sounded stupid coming out of his mouth, but nothing about this looked like it was from the Upside Down. If this was all a dream, it wasn’t a bad one. This – whatever, whoever – was trying to communicate, at least. 

“What?”

“The password, you didn’t say it. When you came in. You didn’t know.”

“Okay.” He bowed slightly. “Will the Wise, may I please have the password?”

“Radagast.”

“Got it.” He disappeared through the branches of the fort. “Knock, knock,” he said, and a set of knuckles flashed briefly where he had been standing.

“What’s the password?”

“Radagast.”

“You may enter.”

He did. “Thanks. I’m Whizzer.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“I – yes?” he said, gesturing at his translucent body. His clothes were a little out of date. “You’re taking this pretty well, for someone who’s talking to a ghost.”

Will shrugged. “I’ve seen worse.”

“Anything I should know about?”

How was he supposed to answer that? Why did he care whether or not this _ghost_ thought he was weird? There was only one chance to make a first impression, and practically no one left in Hawkins without a first impression of him.

“So, you died?”

“Right.”

“Here?”

“In New York.”

“How’d you wind up here, then?”

“Beats me.”

They were at a dead end. Will sat down among the blankets and colored pencils and absently started lining them up in order: ROY G. BIV. Whizzer sat as well, against the wall, so that they were at the same eye level. “What kind of name is Whizzer?” he asked without looking up.

“My sister named me that,” the ghost replied fondly. “My parents named me Richard, but she couldn’t say it right. She’d say ‘Witcher’, which morphed into Whizzer and stuck. Personally, I’m grateful for it. I could never live life as a Richard. Too many nicknames to choose from, and all of them are awful. Rich. Rick. Ricky.” He gave an exaggerated shudder of disgust. “Of course, I still got called ‘dick’ _plenty_ of times.”

Will laughed.

“What about you? Any brothers or sisters?”

“Yeah, Jonathan. He’s seventeen. He likes photography and punk rock.”

“Hey, so do I. I’m – I mean, I was a photographer. But the punks offend my sensibilities, aesthetically and aurally.”

“You know what punk is?”

“Watch it, kid,” He jabbed a finger at Will’s chest, but there was no malice in his voice. “I may be dead, but I’m not _old_. And I’ve only been dead since 1981. Speaking of which, do you know who won the last presidential election?”

“I’m thirteen, not four,” he said, adopting the same mock-offended tone with a smirk. It felt like they were in on the same joke somehow. “Reagan won. Again.”

“Fucking Raygun,” Whizzer muttered. He was like no one else Will knew, ghost or not. It was like he had rolled a nat 20 on charisma in real life. And he didn’t treat him like he was fragile or a freak, with pity or fear – it was hard to say which was worse, but talking to Whizzer was a reprieve from all of it.

“Hey, Will, come inside!” Jonathan called, not bothering to walk all the way up to the entrance, “Mom’s making eggs!”

“I gotta go,” Will said apologetically, “will you still be here later?”

“I should move, too. I have to get back to New York. It’s –” He pursed his lips. “Actually, if I gave you a phone number, could you dial it for me?”

“Yeah, sure – coming!” he yelled back. “There’s a pay phone outside the library, on North and Monroe. I’ll meet you there after we’re done with shul and stuff.”

“Thanks. Now go eat.”

The rest of the morning passed in a flurry of actions, of motions. Eat, shower, get dressed, drive, sit, stand, pray, repeat. All while thinking about what had taken place earlier. It seemed too elaborate to have been a hallucination. The phone call he’d agreed to make later would prove it, either way. Wouldn’t it be practically impossible to hallucinate a working phone number?

\----

At the end of the service, at a table in the back corner, he tried to casually broach the subject. “D’you believe in ghosts?”

Jonathan squinted at him. “What, like Freddy Krueger?”

“Just, like, in general. The concept of ghosts.” So much for being casual.

“All the shit we’ve both seen for real, and you’re asking me if I believe in ghosts.” It wasn’t a question. “Look, are you trying to tell me you _saw_ –”

He stopped. A boy approached them begrudgingly.

“Hi, I’m Jason. Our moms think we should be friends because we’re the only Jews in Hawkins or something.”


	3. Rebuilding

Jason knew the real reason they had moved to Indiana. It wasn’t for the lower crime rate, bigger house, better schools, fresh air, or any other positive spin his mother or Mendel tried to put on it.

They were trying to outrun grief.

For more than a year after Marvin died, they lived with it as best they could. It shrank their world to avoid painful places, painful memories, and anyone who failed to understand the sheer magnitude of it. Their band had been diminished to five, but the grief swelled between them so that New York itself became uninhabitable.

Charlotte and Cordelia had seen them off last Sunday. The moving van was packed with surgical precision and enough chocolate-filled rugelach to last until at least July. After almost eleven hours of driving through factory towns and farmland – full of long, tense silences only broken by Mendel’s occasional nervous rambling about being westward bound, like the pioneers – they arrived in Hawkins.

On the one hand, Jason didn’t have much to miss about his old life, aside from the lesbians next door, who were already planning a huge reunion. He certainly wouldn’t miss being known at school as the freak with the dead gay dad.

Two dead gay dads, really. But that just would’ve made it worse.

On the other hand, pretending that it was possible to start over completely was pointless. The whole thing felt a little like the witness protection program, in Jason’s opinion, which maybe it was. No one here would have to know about what happened, but was that fair? What about anything in the last six years had been fair? He hadn’t had a say in the move – that was all Trina’s idea. (Mendel went along with it and tried to be optimistic, but Jason overheard him on the phone with his brother, groaning about “corn-fed Reaganite goyim” after four days.)

\----

Everyone was relieved when Shabbat rolled around at the end of their first week in Indiana, even though the closest synagogue was miles away from Hawkins. At least it was familiar. After the service, Jason noticed with disgust that his parents were _mingling_. Trina was talking animatedly to a short woman with brown hair and – oh, God – pointing at him and motioning for him to come over. He’d been spotted. He had no choice.

“Jason, this is Joyce Byers – ”

“Horowitz-Byers,” she interjected, and he was vaguely aware he must’ve looked at her funny.

“She has a son who goes to Hawkins High!”

“Jonathan’s a senior, and Will’s going to start high school next year.” She waved to two boys who were standing off to the side by a table of food, in the middle of what looked like a serious discussion.

“Jason’s a junior,” Trina smiled. “I’m sure they’ll be thick as thieves. Jason, go say hello.”

He didn’t want to, but anything was better than this, so he walked over to them, out of earshot of everyone else. They stopped talking abruptly.

“Hi, I’m Jason. Our moms think we should be friends because we’re the only Jews in Hawkins or something.”

“Hey.” The older one – Jonathan – said with a small nod. He paused. “We’re half Jewish. Our dad’s, like, super Lutheran, but he’s an asshole. And Mom used to be _way_ into Christmas. Keeping up with the Joneses or whatever. But that was before all –”

“Before they got divorced,” his brother rushed to interrupt.

So they were hiding something, too. It made Jason like them a little, in spite of the fact that he was falling into a clearly orchestrated plot. They weren’t going to be friends just because his mom had said so. “My parents got divorced, too,” he offered, “I think the only thing they liked about each other was that they were both Jewish – I can’t imagine what they’d’ve been like if they didn’t even have that in common.” They all grimaced.

After another short lull, Will spoke again. “You’re new here?”

“Yeah. We just moved from New York City. Everything’s. . . _emptier_ here.” The younger boy’s expression changed at the mention of New York, but it was impossible to tell why, or what he was about to say, since the adults reconvened behind them at that moment – Mendel’s arm around Trina’s waist, Joyce introducing her sons to them, all three smiling, obviously in cahoots.

“Joyce, we’d be delighted to have you and your boys join us for a bite to eat.”

“There’s plenty of food here,” Jason said, indicating the length of the table.

Trina shot him A Look and continued, “We’d love the company.”

\----

The six of them sat around the new dining room set, engaged in almost unbearable conversation, which consisted mostly of the adults dancing around each other with smalltalk about their jobs and the differences between Hawkins and New York. Jason had just started to tune them out when Joyce said, “So, do you have family back east?”

Before he could respond, “They’re lesbians,” just to make things interesting, and to figure out whether or not their new Midwestern neighbors were homophobes, Mendel said, “My dad and older brothers.”

“Jason’s grandmother lives upstate,” Trina added, “My first husband’s mother. He passed away two summers ago,” she continued by way of explanation, even though no one had asked. “Cancer.”

It was true. Charlotte had explained it to him one day in the hospital cafeteria, that his dad had cancer the way that Whizzer had had pneumonia, that the underlying cause was the same. That there was a name for the underlying cause now.

It was true, but only technically.

It was Jason’s turn to give her A Look.

The atmosphere was thick and cold and awkward. There was no good way to rebound from talking about death at a getting-to-know-you lunch. The noise of forks scraping plates was deafening. Trina spoke first.

“Jason, why don’t you show the boys the pictures you’ve taken? Jonathan does photography, too.”

“Yeah. What do you shoot with?”

“It’s an old Nikon,” he said, “I inherited it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will my titles ever be anything other than cryptic single words? Will I ever update this fic other than at 4 in the morning?


	4. Intelligence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will pieces together some things about Jason's life.

“It’s an old Nikon. I inherited it.”

It couldn’t have been a coincidence, meeting four people from New York in a day. Not in Hawkins, at least. Especially not a dead photographer and a kid with a dead dad, who also did photography. Maybe there would be some obvious proof in one of the pictures, a family photo from a vacation or something. Will followed Jason into the basement.

There was a knee-high maze of boxes that hadn’t been unpacked yet, forcing the three of them to walk single-file. The only clear path led to an Apple IIe. So they _were_ rich. The school had just bought a version II for the AV club, but it didn’t have games on it or anything, and if Jason made friends with the rest of the Party, maybe they could – no, there would be time to focus on that later. This was a fact-finding mission.

Jason grabbed a stack of photos from the drawer of the computer desk and rifled through them like playing cards, close to his chest, before spreading a few out for them to see: the view from a high-rise building, a chess set, light through a window falling on something in shadow.

He didn’t do portraits. Of course. That would’ve been too easy. But neither did Jonathan, and they were busy sizing each other up, talking intently about lighting and composition and camera specs.

The picture Jason had left on top of the stack caught his eye, because it was the only one with people in it. They were newlyweds, slow-dancing together. A blonde bride had her arms draped around the groom’s neck, showing off the ring on her left hand with a huge smile. The only thing it was possible to tell about the groom was that he was shorter than her, since his back was to the camera. Will nudged it aside to look at the picture underneath, which must have been taken a few seconds later, except – the groom was a black woman. He looked at the photos side by side; the dark suits in each were the same. In the second, the other woman had turned to look over her shoulder, and the blonde in the wedding dress was kissing her cheek.

“That’s Cordelia and Charlotte,” Jason said from behind him, with an unspoken _got a problem with that?_ He was gauging Jonathan’s reaction, too – daring either of them to say anything.

What was there to say? They looked happy, happier than anyone else he’d seen in wedding pictures – even though he’d only seen his parents’, so it probably wasn’t a super accurate comparison. And even though it wasn’t a real wedding.

No one said anything for a long minute.

“Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons?” It was worth a shot, if only to change the subject.

“Played what?”

“It’s a roleplaying game where you fight monsters and go on quests and stuff, it’s really cool. We play at Mike Wheeler’s house on Friday nights. I could teach you.” A deliberate breach of Party rules, inviting a stranger. But the rules had relaxed a little since Max joined, and Will would explain to the rest of them about the sick maps he’d be able to make out of ASCII art on Jason’s IIe. Besides, he obviously liked chess, and they needed a tactician if they were going to keep up with everything Mike was throwing at them in the new campaign.

Jason seemed skeptical, and maybe still defensive about the not-wedding pictures, but agreed. It took forever to leave the Weisenbachfelds’ house after that, since the adults were organizing plans of their own. Once they were finally home, Will made up an excuse about having to use the encyclopedia to do research for a history project and practically raced to the library.

\----

Whizzer was standing inside the phone booth, he noticed, and breathed a sigh of relief. All signs continued to point to this being real, however weird it was.

“Hi, Whizzer. Have you been here this whole time?”

He shook his head. “Exploring, if you can call it that. Catching up on the world. Found someone who was listening to the news on the radio. You might want to –” he held his hand to his ear like he was talking into a phone.

“Oh, right.” Couldn’t look like he was talking to himself, after all. “Who am I calling?”

Whizzer looked at him like he was thinking about what to say next. “A friend of mine,” he said with a small, sad smile.

“What do I say when he answers? Or she, I mean. . .”

“If he answers, that’s enough. Ask for Marvin Shapiro, tell him you’re. . . selling magazine subscriptions for the Boy Scouts or something. He won’t try to buy any, don’t worry.”

Will slid two dimes into the machine and dialed the unfamiliar number as Whizzer recited it.

It rang once.

Twice.

Whizzer was hovering – literally – by the receiver, so that they practically overlapped.

Three times.

Will held his breath.

Four times.

There was a click.

_You have reached the home of Dave and Judy Marshall. We’re not available right now. Please leave a message with your name and phone number after the beep._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus! The response to this has been better than I could have hoped for, thanks so much! I got kind of caught up in the details (it did cost 20 cents to use a pay phone in Indiana at least in 1984). 
> 
> As a way to distract myself from writing the inevitable angst in the next chapter, I'm also working on a ficlet about Cordelia and Charlotte's commitment ceremony/wedding (please imagine Cordelia in a puffy-sleeved 80s wedding dress like Yorkie in San Junipero), watch this space for the link!
> 
> [ETA] The wedding oneshot is here: [My Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13700970)


	5. Tremolo

_You have reached the home of Dave and Judy Marshall. We’re not available right now. Please leave a message with your name and phone number after the beep._

He was too late. Marvin would never move out of that apartment, even though he had always been able to afford a nicer one.

He was too late.

It was manslaughter. Fucking manslaughter. And he was responsible.

The feeling that he’d deserved it somehow had been impossible to shake – Catholic guilt was a hell of a drug, even at half-strength. Maybe they were right about Leviticus and all that. Even if this wasn’t fire-and-brimstone capital-H-E-double-hockey-sticks, it certainly fit the bill for purgatory.

Maybe that was why Marvin wasn’t here. Whatever cosmic forces were governing this cruel little joke must have recognized that he was an innocent bystander in all of this. It was a cold comfort, but it was something.

Marvin could have just stayed in the closet. Should have. He’d be unhappy, but he’d be safe. Damn it, he’d be _alive_. Jason would still have a father. The world would still have one more brilliant, stubborn, caring, strong, living, breathing, occasionally infuriating man in it.

“Uh, Whizzer?” Will had hung up the phone and turned to face him. “I have more change, if you want to – ”

“It’s fine. Really. Save your money.” Will wasn’t convinced. He felt a phantom tightness in his throat. “Let’s get out of here,” he sighed. “Back to your fort. I owe you an explanation.”

What was there to lose now?

\----

They both kept silent on the walk back through town to Castle Byers, but Whizzer didn't mind. He was trying to plan what to say, and how to say it. Where was the line between the explanation Will deserved and talking for the sake of talking – for the sake of being listened to – asking a child to bear witness to his grief?

Will was still so young, Jason's age. . . no. It was hard to remember that time in general hadn't stopped just because his had. That meant, God, that Jason would be sixteen now. Seventeen in September. But to Whizzer he was still twelve-going-on-thirteen, faced with the pain and concerns of adult life way too soon. He couldn't do that to another kid.

Deep down, though, he figured maybe there was a story he could tell that Will needed to hear. Not just the pain, but all of it. The comedy and the tragedy of what he and Marvin had had together. That’s where he would begin. That they were together, plain and simple.

They sat cross-legged on the floor of the fort, face to face. Whizzer took a deep, shuddering breath to regain composure.

“The man whose number I asked you to call – ” _I loved him. I loved him so much it killed us both._ “We were in love.” That was better.

Will nodded thoughtfully, letting the words hang in the air between them. “He had a son, didn’t he?”

Of all the things Will could have said. . .

Well, so much for planning a speech.

“He did.”

“I think I’ve met him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter update than usual, sorry, but next up: Jason meets Whizzer (again), and the rest of the Party!


	6. Miracles

After school on Monday, Will had explained over the phone that if he was going to join their Dungeons and Dragons campaign that was already in progress, it would save time to create a character in advance. That made sense.

It was less clear why they had to do this in a fort in the middle of the woods.

“It’s where my copy of the Player’s Handbook and dice are,” Will said when he asked.

“Couldn’t you have just brought all that stuff inside? It’s cold out.”

Will stopped and turned to face him. “This is gonna sound crazy, but you knew a guy named Whizzer Brown, right? In New York, I mean.”

“Yeah? Why?”

They stepped into the fort.

“I think I’ve met him, kind of.”

“What?”

“He’s standing next to you, like, as a ghost. Right there.” He pointed to an empty space. “Weird stuff just happens in this town, okay?”

“I don’t. . . you know what? Fine. Prove it, _Whizzer_ ,” he said to the air.

Will paused. After a minute, he looked away from the empty space to address him again. “You used to play baseball on the Park East JCC little league team, the Blue Devils. Your number was 32 and you hit a grand slam once, in the first game of the season when you were twelve.”

It was detailed, but it wasn’t _proof_. It couldn’t be. “You must’ve snooped,” Jason mumbled. That would explain it. There was an old team photo buried somewhere among the pictures they’d looked at the other day.

Will didn’t hear him, or pretended not to, and kept going, “It was the same day he got back together with your dad.”

There was the proof.

“He wants to know, um, when he died.”

“You mean he’s not with . . .?”

Will shook his head. 

Then, finally, Jason addressed Whizzer, remembering his height and the shape of his face – trying hard, for once, to make eye contact.

“August 22nd, 1983.”

A rush of air enveloped him, heavier than the wind but not as cold. It rolled through him, leaving a vague feeling in its wake. Sadness, mostly – mixed with relief, and something else too big to name.

“We have to tell my parents.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll tell your mom, and then your mom will tell my mom, and then _she’ll_ tell – just no, alright?”

“That’s not fair!” Will was staring at a chunk of ice on the ground, nudging it around with his foot. “He’s telling you to tell them, too, I know.”

He turned to Whizzer again, his voice almost breaking, “They miss you.”

But it really would be Will’s word against his, and it would be impossible to accuse someone of lying about _not_ being able to see a ghost.

The longer Will went without saying anything, the more Jason realized he wasn’t in neutral territory – Will’s name was all over the outside of the fort. He could kick him out whenever he wanted, if he wanted to, or stop repeating Whizzer. Or lie about what Whizzer said.

Jason stood there, fuming at the thought, mentally preparing for a long interrogation, like in a cop show, where they pointed those hanging lamps in the bad guys’ faces. 

He wished, in that long moment, for one of those lamps.

When Will did speak, it wasn’t to him. It was like listening to half of a phone conversation. “Yeah, but he – ” Will started to say, “Okay, okay, fine.” He turned to Jason, straight across from him. “Whizzer’s right. We need to trust each other. And yes, Jason,” he deadpanned without pausing, “I told him to say that, he’s not tricking you. Will is repeating everything I say and I can prove it: that haircut makes him look like Dorothy Hamill.”

They were both able to keep a straight face for about four more seconds.

\----

Things lightened up a lot after that.  The weather turned bitterly cold almost overnight, and school was canceled for days. The three of them played chess together – two-on-one – in the basement of the new house. (Even though Will had Whizzer’s help, Jason still won most of the time.) Details about their lives started to leak out over those games. About being Zombie Boy. About people who thought they could catch AIDS thirdhand. It was like a question on a vocabulary test in real life – define _pariah_ , two ways.

In the end, it was Whizzer who decided he would stay with the Weisenbachfelds, even though Will couldn’t always be around to translate. “I’d rather feel like a house cat than some kind of stalker,” Whizzer said. (Or, really, Will-said-Whizzer-said, but that didn’t seem important any more.)

It was nice knowing Whizzer was around (at least probably,  _usually_  around. “It’s just like being retired, except without hands, and nothing costs money. I snuck into three different movies while you were at school.”) And Jason could tell his parents things from him, sort of, by saying it had happened in a dream. If they were skeptical, it didn’t matter. When Trina almost knocked her favorite teacup off of the kitchen counter, but at the last second it wobbled backward instead of falling to the floor, and Jason had said, “Whizzer did that,” he could tell she wanted it to be true as much as he did.

Life was looking up – even though it was still the middle of winter in Indiana. Besides Whizzer’s presence, there was D&D. Will had excitedly explained the whole campaign, along with the differences between rogues and fighters and clerics and their abilities and stats. A cleric was like a religious healer, which sounded the best to Jason, but Will was already a cleric. So he decided to be a paladin, and accidentally wound up saving Dustin’s life at least twice.

Between the fact that he was slightly older than everyone else and from a big city, Jason was even the tiniest bit _cool_ – at least within the Party – which was new. It was nothing he had any control over, but it was something. Only Mike seemed not to like him (well, and Jane, but it was hard to tell how she felt about anything, and she didn’t say much).

After a session, as they biked back from the Wheelers’ house, Jason broke the amiable silence:

“You should tell Mike.”

Will was confused. “Tell Mike what?”

“That you have a crush on him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, sorry for another completely unintentional and unannounced hiatus! Shoutout to @stardustandswimmingpools for the motivation to pick this up again – I forgot how much fun Whizzer's voice is to write!
> 
> (oh, btw, [that's a pretty accurate burn](https://www.google.com/search?q=dorothy+hamill+1970s&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS503US503&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjjvdL4hL7aAhUX84MKHRaUCh0Q_AUICigB&biw=1151&bih=704), y'all.)

**Author's Note:**

> My first work in this fandom and my first work, period, in a few years, so I hope y'all like it! Updates will also be posted to tumblr @raggedyandrogyne


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